Dear Diary,
My neighbors have had their house condemned. I don’t know what happened but there’s a sign on it from the city saying it cannot be occupied. I’ve seen some of the teenage sons sitting on the front porch – it’s almost like they’re running ‘security’ on the place. I feel terrible about their plight but it would be kind of cool to see it torn down. Trust me -- it's not much to look at. Trust me, neither is mine.
I got a call at work I’d like to share because it’s so incredibly funny I just can’t stand it. I got a call from one of our salespeople saying he was trying to convert a PDF to a Microsoft Word file. He has this software installed on his laptop to do the job. He tells me that he ran the software by the PDF but all he got was a bunch of garbage characters. I told him that it’s never going to convert the document 100% accurately. He says that nothing is readable. I ask him to try it again. He tries again while I’m on the phone with him to the same result. I ask him “can YOU read the original PDF okay?” He tells me he can read it just fine and that the quality is acceptable. I then ask that he send the document to me and I’ll try to convert it for him. He e-mails it to me and I open it – to find it’s a document that was HAND-WRITTEN!!!! (looks like it was faxed to him) I must have laughed for about 5 minutes. “What’s the matter?” he asks. I then explain to him the basic principles of OCR (Optical CHARACTER Recognition). Too funny.
As you know, dear diary, I have been watching the Olympics since they’ve been on. Here are my observations so far:
Beach volleyball: There are two American players who have worn tiny white bikinis while playing their rounds. All I can say is – “Mmmmm” (and you can quote me on that!)
Gymnastics: I love to see the women as they do their flips on the floor routines. I wish I could do that just once. I bet it takes a lot of practice, though.
Synchronized diving: Enough already! Sheesh.
Boxing: I say, with every confidence that I’m not the only person who feels this way, that this has been some of the worst judging/scoring in Olympic history.
Swimming: I have never seen a more awkward interview than the one between Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz. Ever.
Onward and sideways…
I have had some really weird and scary dreams lately. I’m not sure why. The one I remember goes something like this:
I’m riding a bicycle, a small BMX racer, down a city street. The streets are so narrow it looks almost like the landscape has been made up for a movie set or TV show. There is a shaft of light above me but the buildings are dark. It feels like those few moment right before the sun goes down. There are young males milling about and before long shots are fired. I’m about a third of the way up the street when I hear the shots ring out and I turn around to get out. One of the young men comes up to me and stops the bike I’m riding. He sticks his arm under mine and fires a shot from his gun (he was using me as some sort of shield). As soon as he fired the gun, I woke up.
Finally, dear diary, I got to wondering this week about why we, as Americans, don’t use the metric system. There was talk a number of years ago to switch to the metric system but we never did. Is it too late? Whenever I hear a British announcer give a measurement he always follows it with how many feet, yards or miles it was. A picture of countries on the planet that still use the Base-12 system spurred this thought. We’re one of 3 countries left – and not the BIG countries like China, Russia or India. One of them was Liberia and I’ve forgotten the other one. It makes me wonder why they haven’t switched over either. I mentioned this to one of the women at the office and she freaked out. “I don’t want to go to the metric system – I have too many recipes memorized that involve cups and tablespoons,” she says. Every one of the measuring devices I own have both markings on them. I asked her “You mean you’ve never bought a two liter of soft drink?” She got a look on her face like “oh, yea… I never thought about that”.
Well, time to sign off, dear diary. I will write again soon.
p.s. - AJ1I
My neighbors have had their house condemned. I don’t know what happened but there’s a sign on it from the city saying it cannot be occupied. I’ve seen some of the teenage sons sitting on the front porch – it’s almost like they’re running ‘security’ on the place. I feel terrible about their plight but it would be kind of cool to see it torn down. Trust me -- it's not much to look at. Trust me, neither is mine.
I got a call at work I’d like to share because it’s so incredibly funny I just can’t stand it. I got a call from one of our salespeople saying he was trying to convert a PDF to a Microsoft Word file. He has this software installed on his laptop to do the job. He tells me that he ran the software by the PDF but all he got was a bunch of garbage characters. I told him that it’s never going to convert the document 100% accurately. He says that nothing is readable. I ask him to try it again. He tries again while I’m on the phone with him to the same result. I ask him “can YOU read the original PDF okay?” He tells me he can read it just fine and that the quality is acceptable. I then ask that he send the document to me and I’ll try to convert it for him. He e-mails it to me and I open it – to find it’s a document that was HAND-WRITTEN!!!! (looks like it was faxed to him) I must have laughed for about 5 minutes. “What’s the matter?” he asks. I then explain to him the basic principles of OCR (Optical CHARACTER Recognition). Too funny.
As you know, dear diary, I have been watching the Olympics since they’ve been on. Here are my observations so far:
Beach volleyball: There are two American players who have worn tiny white bikinis while playing their rounds. All I can say is – “Mmmmm” (and you can quote me on that!)
Gymnastics: I love to see the women as they do their flips on the floor routines. I wish I could do that just once. I bet it takes a lot of practice, though.
Synchronized diving: Enough already! Sheesh.
Boxing: I say, with every confidence that I’m not the only person who feels this way, that this has been some of the worst judging/scoring in Olympic history.
Swimming: I have never seen a more awkward interview than the one between Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz. Ever.
Onward and sideways…
I have had some really weird and scary dreams lately. I’m not sure why. The one I remember goes something like this:
I’m riding a bicycle, a small BMX racer, down a city street. The streets are so narrow it looks almost like the landscape has been made up for a movie set or TV show. There is a shaft of light above me but the buildings are dark. It feels like those few moment right before the sun goes down. There are young males milling about and before long shots are fired. I’m about a third of the way up the street when I hear the shots ring out and I turn around to get out. One of the young men comes up to me and stops the bike I’m riding. He sticks his arm under mine and fires a shot from his gun (he was using me as some sort of shield). As soon as he fired the gun, I woke up.
Finally, dear diary, I got to wondering this week about why we, as Americans, don’t use the metric system. There was talk a number of years ago to switch to the metric system but we never did. Is it too late? Whenever I hear a British announcer give a measurement he always follows it with how many feet, yards or miles it was. A picture of countries on the planet that still use the Base-12 system spurred this thought. We’re one of 3 countries left – and not the BIG countries like China, Russia or India. One of them was Liberia and I’ve forgotten the other one. It makes me wonder why they haven’t switched over either. I mentioned this to one of the women at the office and she freaked out. “I don’t want to go to the metric system – I have too many recipes memorized that involve cups and tablespoons,” she says. Every one of the measuring devices I own have both markings on them. I asked her “You mean you’ve never bought a two liter of soft drink?” She got a look on her face like “oh, yea… I never thought about that”.
Well, time to sign off, dear diary. I will write again soon.
p.s. - AJ1I